News

A New Name For Your Community Hospital

Newmarket, Ontario - Southlake Regional Health Centre is a new distinctive name that signifies our vital energy, expanded services and state-of-the-art facilities. Combined with our devotion to excellence and an ongoing commitment to provide the best care possible to our friends and neighbours, this progressive, regional health centre is proudly located just south of Lake Simcoe.

As a regional health centre, our facility serves communities throughout York, Simcoe and south Muskoka regions. Lake Simcoe is a landmark that touches each of these areas and therefore, creates a strong link amongst them.

By joining the words south and lake, we create a new landmark that will carry York County Hospital's legacy into the 21st century.

By including "Health Centre" we recognize that our role has evolved. We continue to treat sickness but also promote wellness by offering health information and a full continuum of care that includes prevention. We believe this title better illustrates our commitment to serving a healthy community and enhancing the health status of its people.

The globe in the centre of the new logo represents strength, dependability and the rich history of York County Hospital. It is encompassed by two swirling shapes that symbolize the high energy and remarkable growth of our regional health centre. Within the overall shape, which in fact is a stylized "S", one should also see an eye representing the organization's vision for the future.

Why was a new name needed?

With York County Hospital and other health care facilities in neighbouring areas having similar names, confusion often arises causing patients, family members, physicians and other visitors to arrive at the wrong hospital. On a daily basis, this confusion results in missed appointments, disruptions in the delivery of drug and blood supplies and frustration for families when they arrive at the wrong hospital to support a loved one.

The issue of confusion has intensified over the past two years as a wider audience of people from communities throughout York Region, Simcoe County and south-Muskoka come to York County Hospital to access many of the specialized services we offer as a regional centre in cardiac, paediatric and perinatal care and child and adolescent mental health.

With massive expansion project Redevelopment 2002 around the corner, a solution to the surmounting confusion and an opportunity to celebrate our bright future as a regional centre became clear - a name change would provide not only the clear distinction the hospital needed, but would also signify a fresh and exciting beginning.

What process was used to select the new name?

It was firmly decided at the onset that this exciting endeavor would solicit the full participation of the community and the decision for the new name would not belong to one person. As a result a Name Selection Committee was formed that comprised of local residents representing each of the traditional communities served by the hospital, as well as hospital staff, physician and volunteer groups.

The committee formalized a plan to launch a one-month renaming campaign that was focused on educating the community about the reasons for renaming the hospital, inviting residents to submit name suggestions and providing criteria for submitting a name.

To increase awareness and encourage participation, the campaign included promotional literature, a call-in hotline, a radio interview and live broadcast, street banners, a travelling community tour, several print and television spots and tons of face-to-face interaction.

During this entire process an important and clear message was continuously voiced -York County Hospital is not abandoning its rich heritage but celebrating it as the stepping stone to an exciting future. Thus the campaign slogan became "cherish the past, celebrate the future".

The campaign was a great success as it inspired 968 name submissions that flooded in by mail, email and personal drop-off.

Once the campaign closed, the Name Selection Committee went to work on the daunting task of narrowing the submissions down to a list of five names. They were successful in their task by using the campaign criteria and a democratic voting system.

However, soon after, a local organization that also provides health services changed its name to one that greatly resembled one of the five selected by the Name Selection Committee. This resulted in that particular name being disqualified from further consideration.

Although the hospital's Board of Directors were to make the final decision at this point in the process, York County Hospital once again saw an opportunity to gain community feedback and involvement. Randomly selected community residents and staff were then invited to participate in a series of 4 focus groups. They were presented with 4 names and were asked for their responses to a series of questions about them.

The response from the focus group participants was that 53 percent favoured the name South Lake Simcoe; however, they felt that this name was too long and defied the campaign criteria by naming a specific community or region.

This feedback was presented to the name selection committee. Because the group reserved the right to modify the submitted name a suggestion was brought forward that the committee consider the name "Southlake" modified from South Lake Simcoe.

Thus, the members of the Name Selection Committee, Board of Directors and the Corporation all unanimously agreed to support the new name of Southlake Regional Health Centre.

When will the changeover from York County Hospital to Southlake Regional Health Centre occur?

Although we are extremely excited to begin using Southlake Regional Health Centre, it is important that we take the time to make our community and health care partners fully aware of the change. In addition, we made a promise to our community at the onset that paper supplies and materials bearing the York County Hospital name and logo would not be wasted as a result of a name change. This will result in the changeover occurring in stages with an expected completion date of January 1, 2001.

Thank you for taking an interest in your community hospital. If you wish to make a comment, please contact Corporate Communications.

We are currently building the new world wide web site for Southlake Regional Health Centre. Please visit us in January 2001.